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Rather than dick around with playing "junior starship designer", let's cut straight to the heart of the Enterprise-D.

It's blatantly obvious that the production staff members who designed the Enterprise-D had in mind the concept of the ship being a city in space, more literally than figuratively.

It's blatantly obvious that this concept was mostly forgotten or ignored throughout the run of TNG; most of our discussions about "fixing" the ship revolve around adapting the ship to the role that it was applied to in the television show, and not the role for which the TNG Tech Manual claims it was originally intended: as a deep-space explorer.



Is the notion of complementing a deep-range exploration starship with civilian personnel - creating what is basically a mobile micro-colony of the Federation - fundamentally broken?

If so, why do we continue to try to "fix" a ship which was so basically flawed from the moment of its inception?

If not, why do we continue to try to shoehorn it into the role given it by the show - a role for which it is ill-prepared to fulfill - when it would make more sense to design a new ship (or alter a different existing ship) to better fulfill the role of The Hero Ship?

Either way, why is there such a fixation with a ship which most tend to consider both aesthetically and functionally inferior?

Well, wasn't the Galaxy's original mission supposed to be like 10 years long? That they would be away from Known Space for 10 years?

In that case, I don't think the idea of a "Heavy Explorer" (doesn't need starbase support) is that flawed for that specific mission type.

For a "Hero ship" that the Ent-D became, yeah they should've stuck with a more common-type vessel that was for more generalized mission types.

When I look at the Excelsior and the Sovereign next to each other, like in that big picture on the front of the "Ships of the Line" booklet, the Sovereign looks like a linear descendant of the Excelsior so maybe it would've been a better "Hero Ship" than the Galaxy.

I don't see anything wrong with an acropolis.

In my opinion the only way a "city ship" or an acropolis to work is if the threats from outside are yawn fest. Let me explain. A city ship should be about the city itself, the people in it, a microcosm. It should be inward focused, not outward.

A city ship should easily swat most external threats. And why's that? Because it's a fucking city, it is supposed to be gargantuan, magnificent, more than just a pinprick in the galaxy.

So in my opinion a city ship only works if there's a focus inside on inner character development. That means conflict, within the crew, and probably means it's incompatible with the formulaic nature of Star Trek to focus on the officers. Without conflict, there is no inside story, so the city ship is faced with threats from the outside which if the city ship is to be credible it should easily swat.

But it does not. The whole point of the Enterprise is to face mortal threat, each and every episode. It creates a situation where the whole Federation looks ridiculous, whole cities unable to face threats from species of the week. The absurdity writes itself. It's supposed to be a city ship, but it can't deal with outside bullshit that any city worth its salt can shrug off.

When I think of city, a militant city, I think of something like Judge Dredd. Infinitely protected by mighty walls, its greatest threat from the inside. Cities easily threatened by the outside, and never from the inside, just ridicule their own existence. And the Judge Dredd city faces threats from the inside, traitors, madmen, criminals, not from the technologically backwards neanderthals outside.

If its role is meant to be a deep space explorer, then what we actually see makes even less sense.
There is plenty of evidence that the ST galaxy (just as with that of most fictional universes) is very dangerous, therefore a deep space explorer must be a supership (or preferably a fleet of ships).

One wouldn't take children on such a mission (of course it makes no sense to have children on a warship either). Such a ship would need much more redundant systems - spare warp core, backup life support, etc, as presumably it will be beyond range of normal repair docks.

And of course such a ship wouldn't be designated Starfleet's flagship [which is ridiculous anyway - any real navy has many flagships - one designated for each separate fleet].

A deep space explorer would need every bit of general purpose function that the Ent-D displays (explorer, warship, diplomacy) and in addition the capability to operate for extremely long periods without fleet support - ideally this would be achieved (apart from the obvious of having extra supplies) by giving it the ability 'to live off the land' ie it would be able (via special equipment) to mine planets, etc for materials, have internal workshops able to create big replacement parts, etc.

It would not have all the empty space of the Ent-D as it would have lots of cargo, all the equipment needed by specialists, extra shuttles (some with special purpose functions), etc.

B5B7 wrote:If its role is meant to be a deep space explorer, then what we actually see makes even less sense.
There is plenty of evidence that the ST galaxy (just as with that of most fictional universes) is very dangerous, therefore a deep space explorer must be a supership (or preferably a fleet of ships).

One wouldn't take children on such a mission (of course it makes no sense to have children on a warship either). Such a ship would need much more redundant systems - spare warp core, backup life support, etc, as presumably it will be beyond range of normal repair docks.

And of course such a ship wouldn't be designated Starfleet's flagship [which is ridiculous anyway - any real navy has many flagships - one designated for each separate fleet].

A deep space explorer would need every bit of general purpose function that the Ent-D displays (explorer, warship, diplomacy) and in addition the capability to operate for extremely long periods without fleet support - ideally this would be achieved (apart from the obvious of having extra supplies) by giving it the ability 'to live off the land' ie it would be able (via special equipment) to mine planets, etc for materials, have internal workshops able to create big replacement parts, etc.

It would not have all the empty space of the Ent-D as it would have lots of cargo, all the equipment needed by specialists, extra shuttles (some with special purpose functions), etc.

Since the Enterprise was rarely more than a few weeks away from the nearest Federation outpost, its role as a true deep space explorer is questionable at best.

Basically, this:



—could have handily filled the role of the Enterprise for the series had they stuck to the idea of a straightforward explorer/warship instead of the Love Boat. Proven design with a little updating.

BTW, the ship above exists as a desktop model seen in the Utopia Planetia office reconstruction on the holodeck in "Booby Trap". TNG season 3.

General Zod wrote:Since the Enterprise was rarely more than a few weeks away from the nearest Federation outpost, its role as a true deep space explorer is questionable at best.

B5B7 wrote:If its role is meant to be a deep space explorer, then what we actually see makes even less sense.

Also, see the OP and rest of posts for what the topic is.

Patrick Degan wrote:Basically, this:



—could have handily filled the role of the Enterprise for the series had they stuck to the idea of a straightforward explorer/warship instead of the Love Boat. Proven design with a little updating.

BTW, the ship above exists as a desktop model seen in the Utopia Planetia office reconstruction on the holodeck in "Booby Trap". TNG season 3.

Well, while that would be preferable for any current fans they wanted to get into the show, I think having an entirely new design was the right choice in that it gave TNG it's own identity and didn't make everything a carbon copy of TOS.

Plus, it was 80 years after TVH, so I don't think it would've made much sense for everything to look more or less exactly the same.

So going with that design wouldn't have worked for commercial and creative reasons.

Uraniun235 wrote:Rather than dick around with playing "junior starship designer", let's cut straight to the heart of the Enterprise-D.

It's blatantly obvious that the production staff members who designed the Enterprise-D had in mind the concept of the ship being a city in space, more literally than figuratively.

It's blatantly obvious that this concept was mostly forgotten or ignored throughout the run of TNG; most of our discussions about "fixing" the ship revolve around adapting the ship to the role that it was applied to in the television show, and not the role for which the TNG Tech Manual claims it was originally intended: as a deep-space explorer.

Well, as for the whole civilians on board bit, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time to Starfleet. It's heavily implied that at the start of TNG, it was an era of peace for the Federation. So designing giant cruise ships doesn't seem as completely retarded as it actually was. We can see that by the time the Dominion threat reveals itself, Starfleet has pretty much nixed the civvies on Starships idea. But overall, I would say that the initial conception and design of the Galaxy class vessel was an almost total failure.

Incidentally, for the purpose of the show, the Intrepid class as seen in Voyager was far more suited to the types of missions the Enterprise was always on in TNG.

Is the notion of complementing a deep-range exploration starship with civilian personnel - creating what is basically a mobile micro-colony of the Federation - fundamentally broken?

For the most part. But the show never really used the Galaxy class the way it seems to have been designed for. The whole families on board concept seemed to be for the emotional wellbeing of the crew and their loved ones on long tours deep into unexplored space. Aside from the obvious retardation of putting a large number of civilians in that amount of danger, the reasoning for it makes a bit of sense. If you have your head up your ass like Roddenberry did, anyway.

If so, why do we continue to try to "fix" a ship which was so basically flawed from the moment of its inception?

If not, why do we continue to try to shoehorn it into the role given it by the show - a role for which it is ill-prepared to fulfill - when it would make more sense to design a new ship (or alter a different existing ship) to better fulfill the role of The Hero Ship?

Either way, why is there such a fixation with a ship which most tend to consider both aesthetically and functionally inferior?

Because like it or not, it's an iconic ship of the Star Trek franchise. We saw that ship more or less every week for 7 years and some of us grew to love the design, even with it's laughably obvious flaws. It's really not a design you can just dismiss, simply because of it's huge profile during all 3 of the TNG era spinoffs.

If they wanted a civilian-packed deep-space exploration vessel, I think they could have stripped much of the military equipment off the Galaxy and built an escort with it. Arming the ship to the teeth suggests that it will not be escorted and that they expect trouble: under these circumstances it's misguided to put families aboard.

Ships full of civilians and families shouldn't be expected to fight their own battles, as it leads to a dangerous mixing of roles - for instance, Galaxy is (was) Starfleet's most powerful combat warship, and each one has hundreds of civilians on it. Reduce the military role, make them huge science colonies moving through space, and either restrict them to known-safe areas or provide escort. During wartime, the *escorts* can fight, without endangering families or requiring a retarded 'eject the space-mall' system.

Stark wrote:If they wanted a civilian-packed deep-space exploration vessel, I think they could have stripped much of the military equipment off the Galaxy and built an escort with it. Arming the ship to the teeth suggests that it will not be escorted and that they expect trouble: under these circumstances it's misguided to put families aboard.

Ships full of civilians and families shouldn't be expected to fight their own battles, as it leads to a dangerous mixing of roles - for instance, Galaxy is (was) Starfleet's most powerful combat warship, and each one has hundreds of civilians on it. Reduce the military role, make them huge science colonies moving through space, and either restrict them to known-safe areas or provide escort. During wartime, the *escorts* can fight, without endangering families or requiring a retarded 'eject the space-mall' system.

Yeah, by the time of the Dominion War, crew families were no longer on starships. Even the Oddysee unloaded all of it's civvies at DS9 before it got raped in the Gamma Quadrant.

ShadowSonic wrote:Well, while that would be preferable for any current fans they wanted to get into the show, I think having an entirely new design was the right choice in that it gave TNG it's own identity and didn't make everything a carbon copy of TOS.

Style over Substance. The identity of a show is in how well its written and how it presents itself. The styling counts for dick if you haven't got something solid behind it at the end of the day.

Plus, it was 80 years after TVH, so I don't think it would've made much sense for everything to look more or less exactly the same.

Why? There is nothing which says that an engineering design has to look radically different from its predecessors of a few decades past. If the design works, it persists. Indeed, in the age of sailing warships you could hardly tell the difference between warships of one period and another within a 100 year stretch.

So going with that design wouldn't have worked for commercial and creative reasons.

Why? If the show itself is good, it will sell itself no matter what its stylings may look like. But considering a marketing angle for a moment, the symbol of the TOS/movie Enterprise is iconic. If anything, it would have been far more recognisable as the symbol of Star Trek than the E-D ever managed.

Flagg wrote:Yeah, by the time of the Dominion War, crew families were no longer on starships. Even the Oddysee unloaded all of it's civvies at DS9 before it got raped in the Gamma Quadrant.

I know - but I still think 'greatest battleship + civvies' was a stupid combination to start with. As U235 says the original idea was a 'city in space': making it a city that was ALSO the front-line combat warship (doing fucking patrols of the DMZ for christ's sake) directly put the civilians in danger and resulted in a bad front-line warship design. Separating the two roles would probably have helped both, while avoiding the moral dubiousness.

I guess it's ironic that due to this mixing of roles, the solution to many of the 'scientific' problems in Star Trek involved powerful ship-to-ship weapons. Combined with the TNG 'Federation=Starfleet' idea, perhaps there wasn't the powerful division between 'civilians' and 'military personell' - particularly since Starfleet didn't even consider themselves military.

I glad I'm not the only person who always misspells Odyssey.

EDIT - I realised you instaposted my first post in this thread: despite my habit of not quoting people I'm responding to, I didn't know your post was there.

Stark wrote:

Flagg wrote:Yeah, by the time of the Dominion War, crew families were no longer on starships. Even the Oddysee unloaded all of it's civvies at DS9 before it got raped in the Gamma Quadrant.

I know - but I still think 'greatest battleship + civvies' was a stupid combination to start with. As U235 says the original idea was a 'city in space': making it a city that was ALSO the front-line combat warship (doing fucking patrols of the DMZ for christ's sake) directly put the civilians in danger and resulted in a bad front-line warship design. Separating the two roles would probably have helped both, while avoiding the moral dubiousness.

Saucer separation anyone? It's still retarded, but at least the designers did put some thought into it under the constraints they were placed by Rodenberry's vision. Of course, the writing staff who considered it a chore to write it in before every major combat combined with budgetary issues made it be shown less then a half-dozen times pretty much axed that idea and leads to threads about is the Galaxy more combat capable with or without the saucer, and the whole dubiousness about taking civvies into battles.

Netko wrote:

Stark wrote:

Flagg wrote:Yeah, by the time of the Dominion War, crew families were no longer on starships. Even the Oddysee unloaded all of it's civvies at DS9 before it got raped in the Gamma Quadrant.

I know - but I still think 'greatest battleship + civvies' was a stupid combination to start with. As U235 says the original idea was a 'city in space': making it a city that was ALSO the front-line combat warship (doing fucking patrols of the DMZ for christ's sake) directly put the civilians in danger and resulted in a bad front-line warship design. Separating the two roles would probably have helped both, while avoiding the moral dubiousness.

Saucer separation anyone? It's still retarded, but at least the designers did put some thought into it under the constraints they were placed by Rodenberry's vision. Of course, the writing staff who considered it a chore to write it in before every major combat combined with budgetary issues made it be shown less then a half-dozen times pretty much axed that idea and leads to threads about is the Galaxy more combat capable with or without the saucer, and the whole dubiousness about taking civvies into battles.

Well I think the writers fucked themselves there when they made the first time so damned slow and used it so dramatically. If It was a quick thing and only required a couple of orders it might have been more usable. I can only remember three times it ever separated, twice in the series and once in Generations.

Saucer separation is retarded. The saucer isn't even a starship! Building two ships, without the crossover of roles (even the stardrive section contains some non-military systems, the Saucer has no independent FTL etc) would like make both more successful and less dangerous for the civilians/science staff involved.

The train of thought that went 'city in space -> needs to be frontline warship too -> oh well take off the civvies sometimes' was totally broken. Build a deep-space science ship, build a warship, problem solved. I hate to repeat myself, but having your greatest battleship also be loaded with useless deadweight AND CIVILIANS it stupid. Being able to drop the civilians off, basically defenceless and immobile, does NOT make this okay.

Stark wrote:Saucer separation is retarded. The saucer isn't even a starship! Building two ships, without the crossover of roles (even the stardrive section contains some non-military systems, the Saucer has no independent FTL etc) would like make both more successful and less dangerous for the civilians/science staff involved.

The train of thought that went 'city in space -> needs to be frontline warship too -> oh well take off the civvies sometimes' was totally broken. Build a deep-space science ship, build a warship, problem solved. I hate to repeat myself, but having your greatest battleship also be loaded with useless deadweight AND CIVILIANS it stupid. Being able to drop the civilians off, basically defenceless and immobile, does NOT make this okay.

Hey Stark baby, calm down! Man, we AGREE with you!

<-- see that frown? I have a headache.

I wonder if other ST species also build multi-task ships. Galaxy has rough parity with enemy ships (many of whom are larger or smaller), so maybe everyone else has a strange attitude to shipbuilding as well.

Stark wrote:<-- see that frown? I have a headache.

I wonder if other ST species also build multi-task ships. Galaxy has rough parity with enemy ships (many of whom are larger or smaller), so maybe everyone else has a strange attitude to shipbuilding as well.

Off topic. Is that you in your AV it effin cool BTW

No dude it's Christopher Eccleston as Emo Doctor Number Nine. Now in Hologram form.

His ears are way bigger than mine.

Patrick Degan wrote:

ShadowSonic wrote:Well, while that would be preferable for any current fans they wanted to get into the show, I think having an entirely new design was the right choice in that it gave TNG it's own identity and didn't make everything a carbon copy of TOS.

Style over Substance. The identity of a show is in how well its written and how it presents itself. The styling counts for dick if you haven't got something solid behind it at the end of the day.

Plus, it was 80 years after TVH, so I don't think it would've made much sense for everything to look more or less exactly the same.

Why? There is nothing which says that an engineering design has to look radically different from its predecessors of a few decades past. If the design works, it persists. Indeed, in the age of sailing warships you could hardly tell the difference between warships of one period and another within a 100 year stretch.

So going with that design wouldn't have worked for commercial and creative reasons.

Why? If the show itself is good, it will sell itself no matter what its stylings may look like. But considering a marketing angle for a moment, the symbol of the TOS/movie Enterprise is iconic. If anything, it would have been far more recognisable as the symbol of Star Trek than the E-D ever managed.

Well, the main problem with using that design would've been with the Paramount movie division. They wanted to have a ship entirely unique for the Trek movie series (both TOS and TNG), this is why we never saw a Constitution in TNG (Picard's old ship the Stargazer was supposed to have been a Constitution but they had to change it to a new model) and why we never saw a Sovereign outside the TNG Movies. That Consitution variant is too close to a Constitution for the show to have been allowed to use it.

Lovely. Studio politics. Another reason the Franchise has turned to complete shit. Particularly where it drives stupid creative decisions.

If the movie Constitution had been used, fans would be irate that Paramount didn't have the decency to design a new ship. I don't think the idea of making a new model for TNG was all that bad, considering what the show was supposed to be.

The concept of the Galaxy in itself was an intriguing one and it really was the logical evolution for TOS: from the original series' frontier feel to a more confident, more mature Federation pushing it's borders. The concept didn't really break down until the writers realised that they couldn't really write good drama when the only really threatening villains were uber-beings; the moment they presented the Galaxy as just another ship class-among-ship classes the idea of brining civilians on-board became silly and the moment when the Galaxies went to war it became insane.

The main fault is that the series' concept, and it's lead ship with it, was dropped after a few episodes and whatever was left of that concept didn't fit in with the series proper. The idea wasn't bad, the follow-up just wasn't there.

Bounty wrote:If the movie Constitution had been used, fans would be irate that Paramount didn't have the decency to design a new ship. I don't think the idea of making a new model for TNG was all that bad, considering what the show was supposed to be.

And the proof for this speculation is...

The concept of the Galaxy in itself was an intriguing one and it really was the logical evolution for TOS: from the original series' frontier feel to a more confident, more mature Federation pushing it's borders. The concept didn't really break down until the writers realised that they couldn't really write good drama when the only really threatening villains were uber-beings; the moment they presented the Galaxy as just another ship class-among-ship classes the idea of brining civilians on-board became silly and the moment when the Galaxies went to war it became insane.

The main fault is that the series' concept, and it's lead ship with it, was dropped after a few episodes and whatever was left of that concept didn't fit in with the series proper. The idea wasn't bad, the follow-up just wasn't there.

The concept itself was fundamentally flawed: a military vessel which was kitted out to accomodate families in comfort, even luxury, and carting them around a dangerous and unknown frontier. Which is why the rest of the series falls down from its own galloping illogic.

And the proof for this speculation is...

Proof that the fans would've cried bloody murder if they got the old Constitution? No proof, since it didn't happen. Just some basic knowledge about Trek fans and a functioning brain. No self-respecting Trekkie would've stood for the recycling of the movie design for a ship that was supposed to be a century more advanced. Age of sail my ass, there would've been riots.

Besides, it's not like they could reuse the movie model anyway.

The concept itself was fundamentally flawed: a military vessel

The concept didn't call for a military vessel, but for a space-borne community that could defend itself if need be. That was the original intent. The military aspect was deliberately toned down (something people on this board will never hesitate to complain about) up until the writers realised that they were going to have to do space battles.